keep it: you need love more than i do
by The Rise Of Yin
Summary: Katara Week 2014; seven days, seven prompts, seven opportunities to worship the queen: "Here's the thing about mamas—they only mamas long as they got kids. Without them, what are they?"—Tasha 'Taystee' Jefferson
1. --family

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

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**a/n: posting katara week 2k14 here as well!**

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___"Here's the thing about mamas—they only mamas long as they got kids. Without them, what are they?"—**Tasha 'Taystee' Jefferson**_

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**Family**

Nothing. She is_ nothing_ without her family.

Katara is nothing without her fierce scolding and her fiercer love. She is nothing beyond rocking Aang to sleep and listening to Toph talk about her parents or healing Sokka's bruises. There is no more—just the girl that waits and checks that everyone is asleep soundly before attempting to catch some for herself; a girl who will laugh with her children one minute in the market, and then hurl shards of ice into the necks of bandits who come too close.

Their are still little splatters of dried blood on her sleeves and chin when they get back to camp, and the worry in Sokka's voice sounds a lot like fear, but Katara closes her ears to that part, when he asks, "Katara…you scared us back there…don't you think you're being a bit—"

"No." is her answer, airy and lightweight, like she's practically singing the word as she bends the blood out of her clothes.

She has seen too many families ravaged by war—her own being one of them. She knows sleepless nights and she knows empty days and she knows burning hunger in the soul that cannot be filled with beef jerky or sea prunes or laughter or travelling.

Katara learned from mistakes she saw. Kya had been defenseless. Kya died for her daughter because lying was her greatest weapon. But Tui and La blessed Katara with a weapon far greater, a weapon that cost her one mother.

The bandits' blood is hovering in Katara's palms, beads of crimson glistening in the fire's light. This was war, and the time for defenselessness had passed. Only the ruthless could protect, only the ruthless succeeded and only the ruthless and _their_ _families_ survived. The beads of blood hit the fire with a hiss, and Katara's eyes watch after it.

Katara will get her children through this war with the blood of thousands if she has to.


	2. --matriarch

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

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**Matriarch**

She has seen enough.

Katara has seen war and peace. She's seen mountains and oceans and valleys and deserts. She has seen childish adults and became an adult-child herself. She didn't usually think this way, but after Zuko's passing a month ago, she can't help it. Her friends are gone, her brother is gone, her husband is gone, and sometimes, it's like she can hear them calling for her from the Spirit World.

It is a decision she makes on her own, and realizes that only her daughter is there to be with her when she chooses to die, but that's okay. Kya had come down to take care of her whilst she mourned, and Katara didn't know whether it was coincidence or fate that she'd mourn her mother's death here, too.

In the dead of night, Katara presses her mother's necklace into Kya's hand, and she looks up so confused and so afraid, because her mother _never ever_ removed her necklace.

"It's time for me to go, Kya," Katara says.

Kya's heart drops into her knees and something inside of her slackens and dims. The waterbender is not blind; she knows that her mother is lonely and with little purpose left to continue living, but she'd always had a problem with letting go. Kya takes her mother's hand, as if to almost keep her body put so that she can't physically leave her, and Katara just smiles, memories behind those tired blue eyes, as strokes her daughter's hair.

"I waited so long for you—I waited and dreamed my entire life to have you," Katara chuckles lightly. "I'd always wanted children, but I knew, I always _needed_ a daughter."

Kya quivers and she feels sick.

The lines on Katara's face are suddenly deeper, her white hair suddenly whiter when she looks down at the necklace. "This was your Gran Gran's necklace, and now, I'm giving it to you."

Kya bites her lip. The chances of family were slim in her books, and it feels so wrong to keep something that means so much to her mother, and so she pushes it back into Katara's hand. "No," Kya shakes her head. "Mum, I don't have a daughter to give this to, it isn't right for me to have it—"

"This isn't to push you into having a daughter," Katara said firmly, putting it back in her hands. "This is to thank you for being mine."

Kya's face crumples and her eyes water and she bursts into tears. She doesn't remember how things went after that, because all she can really hear is the sound of herself sobbing. She had her head in Katara's lap for what felt like hours and hours, because she knew that the second she left the room, that would be the last time she saw her mother.

Katara soothes her like she always did, saying how the portals were open now anyway, that she can come and visit whenever she wants, that she can see Dad again and bring her brothers and it will be like old times, and Kya believes every word because there is never a reason to distrust Katara—there is never a reason to distrust the woman that gave her everything.

When she leaves the room, she hugs her for as long as she can before the elderly woman removes herself from her arms, and when she comes back into the room the next morning, her mother is cold and still. She probably used some advanced bloodbending technique to euthanize herself, but none of that mattered.

Kya just hoped that her mother was happy in the Spirit World, laughing and scolding her friends for the rest of eternity, like she was always meant to.


	3. --sacrifice

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

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**Sacrifice**

When she thinks of her mother's body rotting away, deep under the snow _because of **her**_, Katara cannot breathe—so she does not give herself time to think.

It's so hard to be both—to be a child and a woman—and time is proving to pick one for her. The fact is, her mother paid for her to live with her own life, and so Katara has to compensate for Kya's life on top of her own.

It's like she absorbed her mother's soul and sealed it away beside her own, inside herself, and nowadays, Katara cannot find the line between these two identities. She wants to joke and lay under the sun, she _really wants_ to have food fights and not dry her hair after bathing, but that other side of her will not allow it, because that's not what mothers do—that is **not** what Kya would do.

Kya would not lay under the sun—she would get a head start on dinner by skinning rabi-roos and bending blood its into the bushes. Kya would never have food fights, she'd scold the children who did because they were wasting precious and expensive nutrients. She would never, _ever_ leave her hair dripping wet after bathing, because that's how you catch a cold and a headache.

Kya would not pay valuable coins in the market for a pretty bracelet. She would save up the coins for a special occasion or a rainy day. Kya would not fall asleep by the fire at noon like everyone else, because she has work to do, she has children to guard. And so Katara rubs creams and oils into the blisters on her feet and the aches in her knees and neck before starting her chores.

Katara does not know who _Katara_ really is anymore. Because now, she is only a vessel, with fragments of her mother imprisoned within her, unable to let those fragments die along with her body, deep under the snow.


	4. --hope

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

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**Hope**

Katara only gave up at the very, very end, and not before that.

She was the one that pulled them through deserts and broke up squabbles and soothed their sobs. She was the one that made sure they stayed adamant even when she wanted to collapse into sharp stones. She was the one who brought blood slithering back into their wounds. She was the one who founded all of this—their group, their legacy, their future—and that is why it hurts her the most when it all falls to pieces.

And of course it hurts her that they failed and that Aang is dead and that the Phoenix Lord reigns supreme, but that's not the thing that keeps Katara up at night. In the end, she was wrong. All that talk about hoping and caring didn't mean anything at all, and she was _wrong._

Katara cannot see straight or dress herself properly or swallow her food without throwing it up, because that entire time, she was **wrong**. She'd lied. She'd lied without even knowing it. She lied straight to Aang's face and now his corpse is burning in that damn nation that started all this.

And without hope fueling her body, Katara is not the same. Katara is not Katara. A year passes after they lost the great war, and she can't even bring herself to light the incense for her dead friends, because even the thought of seeing **fire** again makes her want to join them.


	5. --queen katara

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

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**Queen Katara**

He'd heard rumours about the Queen of the Water Tribes. They said she surfed the seas between the tribes across the world, that she didn't even bend them that way—that the ocean just _answered_ to her. They say she doesn't wear furs over her robes, and that she walks with an uncovered neck and arms, even in the bitter coldness of the Poles. Any other would have died if they'd done the same, but they said the Queen was special, that she could keep herself alive and warm-to-the-touch, somehow.

But the Earth King is no fool—this child, this girl, _Queen Katara_—was barely sixteen years old. Anyone can create myths about themselves, especially little girls with blood-smeared pasts and no mother to pull them back by the ears.

He is a smart man, and that is why the first thing he does is comment on her beauty when he sees her sat upon her throne. He praises her for how far the tribes have come since her rule began one summer ago. And this was true—Queen Katara was mesmerizingly beautiful and Queen Katara pulled both her tribes from poverty and famine after the Fire Nation raided her home and slayed her mother,father and countless others.

After all, that was why he was here—to negotiate his way into taking ownership of her tribes so that he could make a profit out of her thriving community.

The thing that strikes him most about her is that she does not break eye-contact for even second. She sits upon her throne with warriors lining the halls and the dim light of the sun peeking in through iced windows. Her curly hair is braided in an elegant half-do, her gown is of the thinnest blue silks, her brown arms exposed—just like the myths say—and her pretty face smeared with warpaint on her eyes, cheeks and chin, a strange marking on her forehead. Her is expression is…nothing. It is as though she is staring straight through him.

She blinks. "I have no interest in your negotiation," her voice echoes through the halls. He opens his mouth to speak, but, "Now get out."

He blinks at this, swallows, stands tall under her unflinching gaze.

"Now, now, your majesty," his voice is softer than her dress, his eyes putting the green glow of crystals to _shame_. "You have much to learn about ruling, still blinded by your youth, and so I suggest you reconsider my offer," his voice lowers, expression darkening. "…You wouldn't want to see your people hurt because of your arrogance…now, would you?"

There is absolute silence that follows, and the King smiles up at the young, young woman, so small that he can barely feel it on his lips. The Queen stares straight at him. She does not blink, she does not move, she does not even appear to be breathing. He's just about to smirk; these savages were so simple, the thought of them building a functioning society upon the back of a _girl_ was so absurd, and to think that—

"Take his hands."

He does not have time to register the shock, for within an instant, the king is restrained, his shoulders forced to ground so that his wrists are given something to lean on as his hands are cut off with a single strike of a blade to each one, and the king is too busy screeching in absolute agony to stop a few warriors from ripping some of his robes to tie a tight knot around his bloody stumps so that he does not bleed to death.

"Strange, isn't it?" she speaks from above, watching the man wail and splutter and sob as the almost-black blood drips onto the floor. "When my people were starving and sick and dying, the world had no interest—now that they prosper with wealth and power, it seems as though we have become an _asset_."

He's still screaming, that pitiful king, but Katara continues to talk.

"I'm letting you keep your life because you are not even worth my brothers' effort to clean your blood from their weapons," she says, gesturing to her warriors, leaning back in her throne. "And, to repay me for wasting my time, you will be my messenger." her eyes are still a blue nothingness, but it is only now that the king truly sees them for what they really are.

"Tell the other nations—_The Water Empire serves **no one.**_"

The weeping king is dragged out by warriors, and Katara raises a gentle hand when the maids scurry in to clean. She waves it so that the blood lifts off of the smooth floor and is flicked out of the entrance at the king's feet just as he leaves, careful not to touch the warriors either side of him.

Her expression is practically blank. "You should've left when I told you to."


	6. --fury

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

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**Fury**

No one was really surprised to learn that the Earth King left their tribe without hands the previous month. Queen Katara was not a force to be reckoned with, and the sheer stupidity of the king baffled them—coming to her Grace's own home and threatening the lives of her people? He deserved far worse than he'd gotten.

The Queen hushed the people who suggested that she should have taken more than just his hands.

A little girl shuffled in Katara's lap whilst she braided her hair, shivering in the breeze that flew in from the open door as Sokka walked into the hut. Katara smiled as the small girl closed her little hands into fists, hunching her shoulders from the cold. She kissed the back of her head, rotating her wrist slightly so that the blood in the girl's body moved a bit quicker, warming her up. The child sighed gratefully at the warmth, lifting her head so that the Empress could braid easier.

Sokka sat next to his sister, tickling the girl in her lap before turning to the bloodbender. "You caused quite a scare, you know," the warrior said, leaning back on his palms with a smirk. "Correspondents say that the whole world is talking about that little incident with the Earth King."

Katara tied the girl's braid securely, and she turned around in her lap to kiss the the young Queen briefly on the nose before running back to her mother a few huts away.

Katara smiled after her, but it slowly fell. "If fear is what it takes to keep our people safe, then so be it," she turned to look at him with placid blue eyes. "If they dare try to take us again, having their hands removed should be the_ least_ of their concerns."


	7. --hugs

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

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**Hugs**

Today is a string of embraces, one after the other, and after the first fifty, Katara just doesn't care anymore.

She knows that these people mean well—Aang was a good man and a good Avatar, and everyone wants to hold her and remind her that she isn't alone, and she appreciates that. But hugs and baked goods and condolences don't change the fact that your husband, your friend, your life-partner, is dead, and that somehow, you're left alone in the South Pole all over again.

In the end, Kya is the one to shoo away visitors at the end of the night, and Zuko is the one to put bitter, broth-like tea in her hands. Katara takes one sip and sprays it out on the rugs before erupting into laughter at the former Fire Lord's appalling tea-making skills.

At some point, her laughter merges into sobs and she drops her disgusting tea on the floor, and the crushing embrace hug her friend and daughter envelop her in is the only one that actually matters to her.


End file.
